Systems & Synthetic Biology

To understand, design, and engineer complex biological systems for biomedical applications.

Technologies

• Genome editing of existing genes or creation of novel genetic circuits.
• High-throughput screening of genetic constructs or therapeutics.
• Microfluidics and automation of experimental procedures.
• Computational modeling of multiscale biological system behavior from cells to organisms.

Applications

• Therapeutic design of Engineered cells, targeted therapies, and gene therapies.
• Biosensors and diagnostic development to detect diseases with high sensitivity.
• Personalized medicine based on an individual’s genetic makeup and disease state.
• Drug discovery models to screen for novel drug candidates or to understand drug mechanisms of action.
• Synthetic biology-based tissue engineering: Creating artificial tissues or organs for transplantation or regenerative medicine.

Courses Offered

• BIOMEDE 487 AI in BME

The Healing Power of Big Data

The University of Michigan Health system serves 2.1 million patients a year, generating a tremendous amount of data that can reveal hidden trends and health patterns. With the university’s computational resources, we can model tissue structure and function from the molecular to the whole-organ scale to better understand things like the flow of ions in cells, blood in arteries, and air in the lungs.

Michigan’s Advanced Research Computing — Technology Services external link provides U-M researchers with advanced computing resources, including:

• A shared computing cluster, Flux, with more than 16,000 cores
• A Hadoop cluster for data-science research
• Cloud computing services
• Regional and national high performance computing and network resources